Pages

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Dye Easter Eggs With Onion Skins

In the video, the eggs are also dyed a second time in food coloring in order to add complex colors to the surface of the pace-eggs.

When boiling eggs for Easter, a popular tan color can be achieved by boiling the eggs with onion skins. A greater variety of color may also be achieved by tying on the onion skin with different colored woolen yarn. In the North of England these are called pace-eggs or paste-eggs, from a dialectal form of Middle English pasche. They were usually eaten after an egg-jarping (egg-tapping) competition.

In the North of England, at Eastertime, this traditional game is played where hard boiled pace eggs are distributed and each player hits the other player's egg with their own. This is known as "egg tapping",
"egg dumping" or "egg jarping". The winner is the holder of the last
intact egg. The losers get to eat their eggs. The annual egg jarping
world championship is held every year over Easter in Peterlee Cricket
Club. It is also practiced in Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Lebanon, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, and other
countries. They call it tucanje. In parts of Austria, Bavaria and German-speaking Switzerland it is called Ostereiertitschen or Eierpecken. In parts of Europe it is also called epper, presumably from the German name Opfer, meaning "offering" and in Greece it is known as tsougrisma. In South Louisiana this practice is called Pocking Eggs and is slightly different. The Louisiana Creoles hold that the winner eats the eggs of the losers in each round.

Author Charles Alexander (Sasha) Clarkson. This is a picture of
pace-eggs which I prepared in the traditional Northumbrian (Teesside and
north) fashion by boiling white eggs wrapped in onion skins. In England these eggs are commonly referred to as "pace" eggs.